Very Basic Lightroom Work Flow

Thanks to Sumit Dua of Los Angeles, CA, USA for his question and allowing me to use his image as an example.

Sumit wrote:

I am wondering how much professional photographers process these images to get the color to saturate and pop like they do in your work.  Is it entirely done in the camera (and are settings adjusted to accomplish this) or is it a post processing deal?  For example, the pic I attached is straight out of camera with no adjustments made at all.  When I compare my photos to those of other photographers (say Steve McCurry) or your photos, (say old delhi, no 7 & 8 from your site) the color looks pale in comparison.
1.  Does that color saturation happen in post processing or in camera? Or how much in each?
2.  Do you know of any books/sources that would discuss this issue specifically.  I have yet to find a good analysis of this and it has been driving me nuts.  I cannot figure out if I need to change technique to get to this level or if it a post processing issue, or both.

Would appreciate your thoughts on the above, I assume you probably went through something similar at some point in your career.
Take care,

Sumit

So I have tried to cover some basic work flow that might be missing out there in tutorial land. The answer to Sumit’s question is simple, to get an image like Steve McCurry, you need to shoot like Steve and most of us fall very short of that! But to get the luminosity of Steve’s images, that is something we can do with some very simple post processing in Lightroom. I am constantly amazed at how many people think that they should be getting that kind of image quality right out of the camera. It just doesn’t happen. Here is a short video to show you the basics, the very basics of Lightroom workflow that will get you a little closer to that luminosity you are looking for.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5kAB2m4cd8

Here are the before and after images:

One thing I forgot to mention in the video is when exporting for web from Lightroom, I always set my sharpening in the export dialog to Sharpen for screen and the amount to Statndard. It looks like this: